Falun Gong followers under U.N. protection are deported

A member of the sect says a couple were arrested in Phnom Penh and sent back to China.
AP, August 18, 2002
http://www.ocregister.com/nation_world/18faluncci1.shtml
By CHRIS DECHERD

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodian police arrested two Falun Gong followers under United Nations protection and sent them back to China earlier this month, an activist with the meditation sect said Saturday.

Li Guojun, 46, and his 39-year-old wife, Zhang Xinyi, were arrested Aug. 2 at their Phnom Penh apartment and a few days later forcibly put on a flight to Guangzhou, China, said Levi Browde of the Falun Dafa Information Center in New York. The center maintains contact with Falun Gong followers around the world.

Their arrests occurred less than a month after the couple was granted “persons of concern” status by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Browde said.

The designation aims to safeguard people from being sent back to their country of origin, where they would face persecution.
[...]

It was at least the second time this year that persons under U.N. protection in Phnom Penh were handed over to foreign authorities. Similar incidents occurred last year.
[...]

The couple, who arrived in Phnom Penh from China in 1998, was known to meditate several times a week at their home with a small group of friends, Browde said.

They lost their jobs teaching Chinese in May, and Zhang Xinyi was refused a passport extension by the Chinese Embassy in June, the information center said, citing unnamed sources in Phnom Penh.

They were now being held in a detention center in their hometown of Changsha, the capital of China’s Hunan province, but their condition today is unknown, Browde said.

The center accused Chinese diplomats of prodding Cambodian authorities to deport the couple, a charge denied by the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh.
[...]

The Falun Dafa center blasted the United Nations for failing to protect the couple.

UNHCR’s acting director for Cambodia, Elizabeth Kirton, refused to comment. An official at UNHCR’s Thailand office also refused Friday to discuss details of the case but expressed “concern over the reports” and criticized Cambodia for violating the 1951 global convention on refugees, which Cambodia has signed.

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